“You’re a terrible liar,” Black Widow tells Captain America. She’s absolutely right. Cap is such a forthright upholder of truth, justice and all that, he looks as uncomfortable as an elephant in a fish bowl when he fibs. That he’s forced to do so in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is a key point of internal conflict for the hero, forced to abandon old-fashioned concepts of good and evil and participate in modern shadowy spy games.

Look at Cap’s costume. It was redesigned in monochrome for “Winter Soldier”: sleek midnight blue accentuated with a dark silver star. It replaces the bright red, white and royal blue he wore when fighting Nazis during World War II (see 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”), and when he teamed up with other super types to battle imperialist space aliens in 2012’s “The Avengers.” The change in gear suggests compromise. The year 2014 is not a time for primary colors. Cap realizes, after decades of cryogenic hibernation and reawakening, he’s not just a man out of his time – he’s a pureheart in a corrupt world.

Again reprising the role, Chris Evans often plays Cap/Steve Rogers with a frown and furrowed brow. As he navigates a plot to destroy secret U.S. government agency S.H.I.E.L.D. from the inside out, he learns not to trust everyone toting an American flag. The country he loves is a place of queasy moral corruption now, which he finds deeply disturbing, as he should. During his absence, he hasn’t just missed certain historical and pop cultural touchstones – in his pocket, he keeps a tally of such things to catch up on, e.g., the music of Marvin Gaye and Nirvana – but a sea change in the way the country defends itself and the less fortunate.

FILM REVIEW

‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’

3 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, gunplay and action throughout

S.H.I.E.L.D. head honcho Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) shows Cap an underground stronghold of high-tech weaponry used to stop evil before it starts. Cap doesn’t see justice in that, and when he questions the use of pre-emptive strikes, Fury essentially says his hands are tied. It’s as if Cap doesn’t realize he lives in a world where a nuclear bomb fell on Hiroshima. The firepower is greater. Hell, the power by itself is greater. One must fight corruption with corruption.

The irony is, by the time “Winter Soldier” reaches its grandiose, noisy finale, S.H.I.E.L.D. finds its guns turned on itself. Cap also reclaims his old, brightly colored costume, an act of clarity; in this new context, it has transformed from a symbol of righteous purity to one of hope and optimism in a world of murky truth. Beneath its comic-book action trappings, the film is about Captain America’s loss of innocence. He’s 93 years old, and he comes of age.

Such is the attraction of building feature blockbusters around Captain America: he’s another superhero ripe for new-world reassignment. In recent years, Superman murdered his foe with a neck-snap, Batman faced his dual-personality psychosis, Iron Man designed weapons of mass destruction and Spider-Man’s loss of powers was a metaphor for sexual dysfunction. Cap’s transformation isn’t as extreme, but the film convinces us that the change of character is necessary. An important element is his very relatable quest for confidants, and he finds them in Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character, and Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, an Iraq War veteran who aids the hero by strapping on robotic wings and dubbing himself the Falcon. The friendships open the film to moments of sincere comedy.

Cap’s perspective shift is also relatively subtle. It tiptoes the surface of subtext, something most Marvel Comics movies don’t bother with, especially this “Avengers” franchise. This feels like progress. And yet, it’s primarily an action-adventure picture featuring numerous sequences of large- and small-scale combat. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo deliver the goods serviceably, if not always memorably, from behind the camera, whetting any appetites for Captain America’s acrobatic flip-kicks and flingings of his iconic shield. He takes out a S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft single-handedly, but finds his match in the Winter Soldier, a mystery man with a robotic arm and an obscured face. The conflict inevitably coalesces in a third-act display of bloodless carnage and property destruction; although it feels rote, it churns up some excitement, and isn’t without meaning.

Further story intricacies are best revealed in the theater. However, I will say the twists are telegraphed and predictably resolved by those with knowledge of fantastical comic-bookisms or clichéd movie plots. Robert Redford, cast as a high-up government muckity-muck, lends gravitas to some scenes, although the writing fails him during moments shared with Jackson, and you’ll wish they packed more of a thespian wallop. Redford’s character is a primary component in the series-within-a-franchise’s change of tone, from the gee-whiz throwback heroism of “The First Avenger.” The shift occurs because it must. It generates moments of consequence inside its protagonist’s head, and in the larger “Avengers” narrative, which soldiers on.